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Ok so the reason I want to go vegan is because I hear it is healthier for a person and I don't see why I shouldn't give it a shot. What scares me is if you look at the sad fact, trying to be healthy will cost more money. Any ideas how I can start off and maintain a vegan lifestyle?

As much as people joke about this subreddit turning into /r/lentils, those fuckers really are a vegan's best friend. You'll be eating them by the fistful, but they're so cheap they're practically free.

Dried beans in general are great, as long as you can remember to soak them (lentils don't get soaked). Again, they'll be a staple.

You'll probably be eating a lot of rice; try going to brown rice if you can. It's healthier than eating a bunch of white rice, which is essentially pure sugar.

Invest in a pressure cooker; it really helps with the cook time on things like beans and whole grains.

Learn to make your own meat substitutes. A sack of wheat gluten isn't super-cheap, but it's way cheaper than buying pre-made Morningstar or Boca patties, and doesn't make you feel like a degenerate.

In my experience, anyone who relies on meat and dairy substitutes as a 1-to-1 substitute so they can eat just like they are used to is going to be severely disappointed. Break out of your box and try new recipes. Don't have a menu full of soy burgers, chick'n nuggets, rice cheese, spaghetti and soyballs, etc.

oh no I would probably start off with the simple things, then move on to trying/experimenting with things. Starting out with plain oatmeal for breakfast with a fruit of some sort on the side, then moving to a way to make that oatmeal better or even finding a good vegan French toast to make. Basically starting off basic and working my way up to full vegan if that makes sense

This was one of my go-to recipes. I eventually adapted it to do all sorts of things. Just mix quickly and get them cooking immediately, so the gluten fibers don't develop. If you do it in the pressure cooker, the cook time is closer to 20 minutes.

This is one of my favorite recipes. I usually add liquid smoke or smoked salt as well and up the amount of spices.

Vital wheat gluten isn't really cheap, but it's less expensive than meat, for sure. It's over $4 a pound at Whole Foods, which is the only place I can find it in bulk. The little boxes at Kroger end up being expensive. I actually ordered a 50 pound bag from Honeyville because it ended up being about $1.50 a pound that way.

Buy dry rice and beans in bulk and always keep potatoes on hand. These are all dirt cheap and very nutritious. Try to keep various spices/vinegars/oils etc. on hand to flavor these. For example, a baked potato drizzled in olive oil and malt vinegar is fantastic. It's also very easy to make gravy from whole wheat flour which you can drizzle on rice and beans.

With this base (which is about as inexpensive as it gets), you can then purchase frozen vegetables and fresh fruits as your budget allows. You won't have to worry about getting enough protein or calcium if you're regularly eating plenty of this in as much variety as possible, but don't scrimp on the B12. Try to get cereals and vegan milks fortified with B12, and combine it with sublingual vegan B12 supplements. I mean, I'm a hardcore vegan, but seriously if you are economically unable to obtain vegan B12 sources, go with an inexpensive animal source. You don't want the negative health effects of a B12 deficiency. Trust me.

If you need recipe ideas for the healthy vegan foods you are able to obtain cheaply, check out this site. Plugin what you have and it will give you recipe ideas.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions as you get going. And good luck! It's worth it!

Start pre-heating your pan, on a medium heat, and add in flour. Stir with a fork to break up lumps. Add yeast and continue stirring to mix well. Drizzle on vegetable oil, while stirring and mixing, until the mixture uniformly darkens. Pour in ¾ cup of water, while stirring. The gravy will come to a boil pretty quickly and, as you stir, you can judge the relative thickness and see if you want to add more water. At this point soy sauce will both thin the gravy and add taste and color. When it cools a little it will thicken a bit.

This is good over both rice and steamed vegetables, and it helps to complement the amino acid profile of rice. If you want to push the amino acid complement a bit further you can add some TVP (soy) granules.

Edit: Provided you don’t burn the dry ingredients, this recipe is not at all finicky so you can just dive right in and do it. The one recommendation that I would make is to use a well seasoned 8” cast iron pan and good soy sauce… Kikoman or better.

You do not have to supplement protein. That's a common misconception. The average veg*n gets 60% more protein than they actually need anyways. If you're eating enough calories, you're getting enough protein. The only thing you have to supplement is B-12. Nutritional Yeast, and some non-dairy milks are fortified with B-12 and you can get plenty of it that way. Actual b-12 supplements aren't that expensive either.

Here is a source of information on vegan protein including the protein content of different foods and what a meal looks like that would give you more than enough protein. http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.php

I actually don't take any supplements and my yearly blood tests are perfect. I get most of my b-12 from nutritional yeast. It has a cheesy flavor and is great sprinkled on just about anything!

I have been vegan for 25 years and have never worried about supplementing protein.

Rice and beans. Cheap and delicious.

Learn to cook dried beans from scratch. I cook mine in the crock pot. Basically, you put the dried beans with enough water to cover by a few inches and turn the crock pot on high. Don't add anything else yet. In about four or five hours the beans will be soft- then add sautéed onions and garlic, other vegetables, salt, spices or anything you want and cook for another hour or so.

Hummus is your friend. It's great to keep in the fridge to snack on with those little baby carrots. Learn to make it and you'll be happy forever. A food processor works best.

When I make hummus, I like to grind my own tahini and cook chick peas from scratch, but you don't have to be that hardcore. Buy some canned chick peas, a jar of tahini, a jar of cumin, some garlic and some lemon juice and salt. There's plenty of recipes online to give you the proportions. I never measure anymore, but if you're making it for the first time, you'll want to. You can add roasted peppers, a chipotle pepper, smoked almonds, paprika, cilantro, or any other flavor you want.

No, you don't. There is plenty of protein in everyday stuff. Average American (at least) eats way, way more protein than necessary. I've been veg (not vegan because I think it's pointless) for 15 years. I'm fine without trying. If normal decent eating is too hard, drink a shake. Almost any food is cheaper than steak.

Shakes were a way I thought in the extreme case of me going through protein related problems, drinking them. Something like that would go a long way. I have no doubt everyday things have proteins, but I have heard both sides of "oh you need to supplement" or what I have been reading where you really don't.

I won't even pretend to act like I know what I am talking about, or ultimately care about my consumption. The answer to your question is "beans". But 15 years of not dying indicates to me even that isn't a needed worry itself.

I found a book on Amazon called Vegan on 4 dollars a day. The recipes are a easy but can be large for a single person. I would make a few recipes and batch them for the week. It really helped when I first started out.

I'm vegetarian and I wish I could go vegan. I can assure you that you'll save money. Have you seen the price of meat these days?

What are you accustomed to eating? That would help us make suggestions

Can you start by making your favorite dishes and replace animal protein with a plant protein? Some possible replacements include tofu, soybeans/edamame, seitan, beans including peanuts, mushrooms, quinoa.

Ethnic foods are often easier to make meat free. Learn how to cook Indian, Chinese, or Mexican at home. For example Stir fry, burritos and fajitas, stews, hummus.

I got a good deal on a rice cooker. Then I got a 10 pound bag of basmati rice at the ethnic grocery store cheap. I'll run the cooker every 2nd or 3rd day and put most of it in the fridge. Use it for fried rice, under a spicy stir fry, with kidney beans, or jazzed up with a spicy sauce. Try quinoa in it. Quinoa is a "complete" protein, so it's got more nutrition than some thing like white rice.

Some ingredients you can get super cheap if you shop an ethnic grocery store.

And of course there are America foods that don't require meat: salads, pasta salads, french fries, baked or mashes potatoes, lots of great vegetables in season right now, fruit smoothies and salads, pies.

Google Vegan cooking to find substitutions for animal products in recipies. You can bake without necessarily needing eggs or butter.

Honestly, my diet since I moved out is pretty basic... usually frozen foods like frozen pizza for lunch. Breakfast bar in the morning (or just granola in general). Dinner is usually with my parents so that can range from shrimp tacos to roast to spaghetti.

I really think for breakfast what I could start doing is trying to get into oatmeal. Lunch like something with avocado on a sandwich. Dinner like a salad or pasta.

I always recommend reading Thrive by Brendan Brazier. If you don't do your research into your diet before embarking, you will likely feel miserable, fail, and then tell everyone you know that it's too hard to be vegan. You need to make sure you get all of the essential nutrients, enough calories to sustain, and enough flavor and variety to keep things exciting. Thrive will give you all of this and a ton of amazing recipes to get you started.

Best way to eat vegan frugally is to buy in bulk. Costco is actually very good with a lot of its fruits and veggies. A lot of people make connections with produce wholesalers, I've never tried this though. Co-ops and farmers markets are good too. I wouldn't worry about organic at this point if you're trying to be frugal, the fact that you'd be making a huge leap in the quality of your diet outweighs the need for eating organic at this point.

First paragraph is opinion, but you may want to ween towards vegan via vegetarianism. Going veg really isn't hard, but even the leap from that to vegan isn't minor. Often wholesale changes to lifestyle don't fail because they are "too hard", it's because we're creatures of habit.

The feeling miserable and failing part certainly is (it's not a give). Expecting someone somehow not get enough calories (almost impossible) and nutrition is (remember, most people eat far too much meat, we don't need near the amount of protein people believe). Flavor and variety is (lots of people don't care about taste or variety). Everyone is different.

Browse /r/vegan or /r/raw and you'll see tons of posts of people who tried those lifestyles and are struggling and/or failed. When they post what they are eating, they are clearly lacking essential nutrients or have a dull variety. I will give you that many people don't need variety or taste, but if you are missing essential nutrients, you WILL feel like crap and it would take a massive amount of willpower to not break "diet" as your body screams for what it needs. Your body will start to fail ranging from minor nuisances like cold sores to major, life threatening disorders depending on what you are deficient in.

Many people who transition to vegan do in fact get too few calories. I agree, it's hard on a standard american diet to get insufficient calories, but when you're eating mostly plants instead of processed crap, it is very possible. I didn't bring up protein for a reason, I also agree one on a healthy diet doesn't need to try to eat more protein, we are told we need far more than we actually do.

The people getting health problems must already be eating absolute garbage or be so clueless they shouldn't be making their own health choices. Raw is just laughable nonsense to me, so I won't even discuss it. But with most dietary decisions, the idea of eating better / more leafy greens applies to almost everyone meat eaters, veg, or vegan (except you, based on that chart you posted your #2's must be Hulk green!). If you eat good food, you'll be fine. If you eat super processed crap, whether it vegan or not, it'll be a lot harder to be healthy.

I'm curious why OP is going from meat eater to vegan, apparently overnight. I think the reasoning behind a lot of people's change are fleeting (often fashionable in a peer group or something similar).

The people getting health problems must already be eating absolute garbage or be so clueless they shouldn't be making their own health choices.

I agree, hence why I encouraged him to do the research before hand. It's never too late for someone to learn and take control of their eating habits.

Raw is just laughable nonsense to me, so I won't even discuss it.

I don't try to eat raw, I think the only advantage raw eating has over vegan in general is that raw people would avoid the processed food that vegans could still eat. I believe in a plant-based vegan diet.

If you eat good food, you'll be fine.

I agree here as well, I believe it's more important to focus on what you do eat instead of what you don't eat. That said, I do believe optimal eating does not need nor should it include animal products for reasons of health, economics, and sustainability. Netflix has a lot of great documentaries on these subjects which if you'd like to learn more, I'd encourage you to check out. Forks Over Knives and Vegucated are really well done.

My breakfasts are giant fruit and veggie smoothies, and my lunches are usually some sort of large salad or vegetable sandwich, but then I enjoy a nice hot meal for dinner (still vegan). Usually some sort of curry variation with brown rice, lots of veggies, beans or chickpeas.

I made this chart to research to make sure I was getting everything I needed: http://i.imgur.com/SlFsBBr.jpg I hope you plan on eating more than you listed above though, because you'd be hardly getting any vitamins or minerals, which are absolutely important. Healthy eating is more about what you do eat than what you don't eat, and that applies to veganism as well, maybe even especially.

No those were just examples. Obviously with the oatmeal would be some sort of fruit. Lunch could be a combo of salad and some rice dish, then dinner could be a pasta (this is just an example of a day, not what I would eat for the rest of my life)

I clip coupons. Sometimes this gives some pretty good printable coupons and use Ibotta as it has a link up with Whole foods. Get your vegan lux items cheaper. I usually find Boca coupons (I like their meat crumbles), Morningstar (a lot of their stuff isn't vegan but the boxes ribs are and keep in the freezer), Silk, Almond Dream, SoDelicious coupons which fill in gaps when it comes to your meat. If I buy say daiya cheese I'll put the shreds in the freezer since you can pull them out, throw them in a recipe and they melt from frozen. Also, Butler Soy Curls are amazing. You can buy them bulk at Whole Foods. Not the CHEAPEST but compared to meat with how far they go with you it's rock bottom.

Bowls are your best friend. Google Vegan bowls. It's rice, a sauce, beans and some veggies. It's a way to get all your complex needs met. I love using Soy Curls which I just rehydrate with some (vegan) chicken bullion, squeeze the water out, throw them in a pan with a little olive oil, fry them up about 4 minutes and then cover them in your favorite BBQ sauce.

It's stuff like dressings, BBQ sauces, Asian Marinades or Soy Sauces, oils and other staples that I coupon for frugally. They really help round out a blah dish and keep for a while unopened in your pantry. Summer is BBQ season too.

Learn to love your veggies. I began eating Kale recently and love it. You should google recipes for it. Pan steamed for a few minutes is aces with loads of garlic. Collards are another amazing BBQ dish side with rice. ALSO brussells sprouts! All pretty cheap though I find sprouts kind of spendy since they're cool these days. Spinach is another good green and cauliflower is great mashed, pan roasted and made as steaks. Google cauliflower steaks and be amazed.

If you're worried about protein a box of boca burgers (only the box marked VEGAN is vegan but there's a new spicy burger that's the jam and vegan), some soy curls and a bag of beef crumbles will do you. I can't recommend Beyond Meat enough. Not the cheapest but you shouldn't be eating fake meat all the time. Boca Beef crumbles are vegan too. Even cheaper you can buy tempeh or tofu. Cheapest is find a rock bottom Vital Wheat Gluten source to make seiten.

It doesn't cost more to eat healthy though I don't buy organic. I shop seasonally. I stick to cheaper greens and bulk bin portion grains. It took me a while to build a pantry of rice, beans and snack things. I snack on trail mix I make usually. I also like frozen fruit bars, generally vegan, which summer provides on sale! Wee. (Outshine bars are great) Fresh veggies sliced up. Steamed veggies cold.

I take B12 and a D vitamin. (I live in Portland) Neither are expensive for a 6+ mo supply.

My junk foods are limited. Most of my grocery budget goes to produce and refilling the pantry staples. My biggest splurges are juice, fake meats (couple times a month eaten), vegan ice cream (I coupon for it, right now I've been doing $2 ice creams. Not bad) and oreos.